Amazon reaches deal with NFL to stream Thursday night games

The NFL has partnered with Amazon to livestream "Thursday Night Football" during the upcoming season. And while Twitter paid $10 million for those rights, Amazon's price jumped five-fold, as it paid $50 million for essentially the same package of games, the Journalreported.

For Amazon, adding live sports to its Prime video lineup represents a rare get that the retailer was previously missing.

"Our focus is on bringing customers the best premium video programming, when and how they want to watch it". The e-commerce giant has confirmed the deal, not the financial details, where it stream ten Thursday-night Football games online. To stream the game through CBS All Access, you'll need to pay $7.99 per month. Amazon, clearly, likely doesn't care about viewer engagement so long as the National Football League brand can help bolster the company's Prime-subscriber count. "And we're thrilled to extend our ongoing content relationship with the NFL-the gold standard for sports entertainment-on behalf of our Prime customers". Subsequently, these games will also be available through the streaming properties of NBC and CBS.

Twitter, Facebook and YouTube were in the running for the 2017 streaming rights for Thursday night.

That means that technically, the games won't be free to stream, but they will be carried by broadcast networks.

While the viewership numbers couldn't compare with how many people tuned into the game on TV, it was generally considered a success. By 2012, Thursday Night Football had grown to a 13-game schedule exclusively on NFL Network, where it remained through the 2013 season.